262 PRESENT POSITION OF 



that of the French investigators, namely, that it was not 

 in the least dependent upon the species of yeast with which 

 the fermentation was carried out, but that it depended solely 

 upon the grapes ; subsequently he adopted, in the main, 

 Wortmann's views mentioned below. In a letter which I 

 received from him in December 1891 he expressed himself 

 as follows : " Prompted by your works, I instituted in Ger- 

 many experiments with reference to the pure fermentation 

 of wines, and based upon these I carried out wine fermenta- 

 tions on a large scale with a pure cultivated yeast selected 

 for this purpose. Although, for technical reasons, we were 

 for the time being prevented from carrying out true pure 

 fermentations, the results obtained are nevertheless of im- 

 portance." The pure cultures were added to the ordinary 

 must. As director of the experimental station at Wadensweil, 

 he has now introduced the new system on a large scale in 

 Switzerland. 



In 1892, Professor Wortmann, Miiller-Thurgau's successor 

 in Geisenheim, published a treatise on the fermentation of 

 must with pure cultivated yeasts ; it appeared in No. 23 of 

 'Weinbau und Weinhandel,' Mayence. In this he strongly 

 emphasises that the method hitherto adopted for the fer- 

 mentation of wine must is very crude, as it is entirely a 

 matter of chance whether a good fermentation is obtained 

 or not. He then indicates the different sources of danger 

 to which the wine is thus exposed, and strongly recommends 

 the introduction of such races of pure cultivated yeast as 

 have been previously found to give a good result. Only in 

 this manner is it possible to insure a good product, as has 

 been done in the brewing industry. He says further, " When 

 we ferment the same must with different races of yeast, we 

 also obtain dissimilar products, and these will differ the more, 

 the greater the differences are with respect to the properties 

 and habits of life of the yeasts employed." Nevertheless, he 

 advocates the view that the character of the wine is never 



